Tribunal revokes licence of discredited pathologist Charles Smith

The victims of Dr. Charles Smith have lived experiences that are difficult to fathom. Accused falsely of killing their children or close relatives based on the pathologist’s misguided evidence, they have risked death in prison, faced the ugliest of name calling and been torn away from their surviving children.

“You took it upon yourself to destroy my life,” said one, Brenda Waudby, in a victim-impact statement. “You have no idea what it is like to walk down a street and be called a child killer.”

On Tuesday, Dr. Smith himself faced punishment for the first time, as the discipline committee of Ontario’s medical regulator revoked his licence and ordered him to appear before the panel in March to be publicly rebuked for his string of flawed child-death investigations. He was also directed to pay $3,600 to cover costs of the one-day hearing.

For those whose lives he unnecessarily ripped apart, however, the College of Physicians and Surgeons sentence simply did not seem to fit the wrongdoing.

“He got a slap on the wrist,” said William Mullins-Johnson, who was awarded $4-million in compensation by the province of Ontario last year after being convicted wrongly of murdering his four-year-old niece — and spending 12 years behind bars.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s a spit in the face of myself and the public of this province…. This was just to show that the College did something. It wasn’t much.”

Mr. Mullins-Johnson, who attended Tuesday’s proceedings with several others similarly affected by Dr. Smith’s actions, argued the only appropriate censure would be criminal charges of obstruction and perjury.

The College hearing was just the latest fallout of Dr. Smith’s troubled investigations of child deaths, which have already been condemned by a judicial inquiry and continue to reverberate through the province’s justice system.

Now reportedly living in Victoria, B.C., Dr. Smith was considered a leading expert on pediatric forensic pathology from the 1980s to 2001. But he was found later to have made errors in 20 investigations, the majority of which led to criminal charges against parents or other caregivers. In most cases, they have since been cleared of wrongdoing.

In fact, though he presented himself as a forensic pathologist, he had no training as one. The pathologist did not attend the hearing Tuesday but, through his lawyer, Jane Langford, pleaded “no contest” to charges of professional misconduct and incompetence.

He also agreed to a statement of facts that set out a litany of wrongdoing, such as failing to adequately investigate cases, voicing opinions not backed up by the pathological evidence and referring to aspects of the social history of parents or caregivers that were irrelevant to the pathology.

He often exaggerated his credentials and gave evidence that was “overly dogmatic” and unbalanced, said the statement read aloud by a College lawyer.

The discipline committee said the offences called for the most severe penalty it could hand out, although revoking his “certificate of registration” turned out to be somewhat moot. Dr. Smith has not had an active licence in Ontario since 2008. The panel ordered him to appear March 25 to receive the official reprimand, but it is unclear what, if any, power the committee has to compel him to do so.

Mr. Mullins-Johnson called him “cowardly” for not attending Tuesday. In their victim-impact statements, those who were prosecuted partly based on Dr. Smith’s evidence spoke of deep, long-lasting effects of the nightmarish experience.

“I have suffered from almost 20 years of depression. I have not been able to find steady work. I am living below the standard of living,” said an individual identified only as CM.

Dinesh Kumar, whose conviction in the 1992 death of his infant son, Gaurov, was just overturned last month, said the experience ruined his dreams of a large family.

“My wife and I, who longed to have more children, decided against it because we could no longer trust that this horror would not be repeated.”

Mr. Mullins-Johnson said in his statement that he faced daily death threats while in prison and, despite his acquittal, is still listed as a sex offender by children’s aid societies.

Maria Shepherd, who is expecting a date with the Court of Appeal soon to try to have her manslaughter conviction overturned, spoke publicly for the first time. She said she had hoped Dr. Smith could explain why her step-daughter, Kassandra, had been ill for so long before her 1991 death, only to have the pathologist finger her as the culprit.

Another specialist later found evidence suggesting the baby died of natural causes, possibly epilepsy.

“Charles Smith is a disgrace to the medical profession and to humanity itself,” she said.